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Closed-string field theory: An introduction. (English) Zbl 0856.53057

Julia, B. (ed.) et al., Gravitation and quantizations. Proceedings of the Les Houches summer school on theoretical physics, session LVII, July 5 - August 1, 1992. Amsterdam: Elsevier. 647-678 (1995).
The aim of this paper is to explain the basic ideas of string field theory. In the first section the author describes the origin of the string field theory. In the second section he shows how one can build all the different Riemann surfaces efficiently by using vertices and propagators. He also proves explicitly two basic results and then explains why they guarantee that all Riemann surfaces can be produced without missing any surface and without overcounting any surface. In order to achieve this he uses string diagrams. In the third section the author is concerned with showing that the Batalin-Vilkovisky formalism is extremely efficient in quantization of the closed-string field theory. In particular, he explains how a symplectic structure of the state space can be used to break naturally the string field theory into fields and antifields. The last section contains the description of recent developments.
For the entire collection see [Zbl 0923.00029].
Reviewer: V.Abramov (Tartu)

MSC:

53Z05 Applications of differential geometry to physics
81T30 String and superstring theories; other extended objects (e.g., branes) in quantum field theory
37J99 Dynamical aspects of finite-dimensional Hamiltonian and Lagrangian systems
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